I looked again into the mist on the horizon and felt a palpitating longing to be sailing away in search of mystical isles.
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***
CHAPTER 2
***
The rain intensified. I pulled my coat close around me, pushing against the wind, and ran north toward the ruins. Centuries of towering waves had eaten it down to natural terraces of rock, and the banisters to pedestals, crumbled and beaten, washed white and broken by the tides. Still, in spite of all the diminishment, there remained a sense of immensity about the place.
We had been told that it had once been a convent for the pious, cloistered order of Saint Brigid. I always doubted that, long before my mother suggested to me that it wasn't true. The nuns I'd seen in the village of Kilcoyle were a meek and retiring lot, and this had once been too powerful and ostentatious a building to house such creatures.
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I ran toward a decrepit tower to take shelter from the downpour.
From this spot, looking through the break in the wall, I could see the bog where the men of Ard Macha cut turf for burning. It looked desolate now in the rain, and as I stared, I relived the day last year, also in the month of March, when my baby sister, Ishleen, had become ill.
My da, my brothers, Tom Cavan, and his father, Michael Cavan, had been standing in the bog, cutting the dark loamy earth into neat slices that they'd piled on the ground to dry. Mam and I had brought an afternoon meal to the men. Since she'd been carrying Ishleen at the time, I had held the basket of bread and cheese and the flask of hot tea.
Ishleen had reached and flexed one of her small plump hands toward me and smiled from over Mam's shoulder. I had made a face at her and she'd laughed, her cheeks round and ruddy.
Tom's shovel had hit something hard in the rich uncut ground. As my brothers had been helping him unearth the obstruction, a rancid smell had risen out of the bog. We had all covered our faces in revulsion, but it had caused Ishleen to grow agitated. Mam and I had both spoken softly to her, but she'd begun to kick and squirm in an uncharacteristic way.
The thing that had been unburied was very large, and for a while, no one knew what it was. All five men had gone down on their knees around it, wiping the damp peat away.
"It's armor of some kind," Donal had called out.
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Ravens had gathered and sat on the walls of the ruins, facing us. Ishleen's agitation had grown progressively-worse, and when my brothers had helped Tom out of the bog hole and onto dry land, Ishleen, her face damp and ablaze, had begun to scream. At a loss, Mam had carried her up the hill, Ishleen's screams echoing down to us.
The thing that had lain under the ground had indeed been armor, as black as pitch from centuries in the bog. It was a piece of back and chest armor, unusual in two shocking ways: it had been made to a woman's form, and the woman who had once worn it had to have been at least ten feet tall, a veritable giantess. Etched into the metal at the shoulders and collar and along the bottom were small images. Fingal had peered closely at these, recoiling now and again at the stench, then touching them with his fingertips to remove any excess turf.
"These are Viking symbols," he'd said, and I'd stepped in to look. The thing had emitted an intense cold.
"I hate to say what I think this is," Fingal had added.
"Tell us," Da had said.
"The armor of a Valkyrie, a Viking corpse goddess. There were battles near here, I heard, seven centuries ago, around the time when the great Brian Boru defeated the Vikings at the battle of Clontarf."
The ravens that had gathered around the ruins had suddenly risen in a noisy panic and flown inland. In the distant sky over the sea, much larger birds were circling, their screeches echoing ominously.
It was the memory of those birds that shocked me back
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to the present moment. I sighed. Other than the soft patter of the rain on the bog water, the skies were quiet.
Feeling someone's touch on my shoulder, I gasped and turned. A young woman with dark, agitated eyes stood a few steps behind me, leaning forward from the waist, her arm extended, fingers poised to touch my shoulder again. She wore a cloak, white and very pale gray, and as she slid the hood off her head, bits of goose or swan down drifted from her sleeves.
She cast nervous glances at the bog, and then out at the areas of the hill and beach that could be seen through the break in the tower wall. Undoing the top button of her cloak very deliberately, she revealed a necklace with three faceted crystals, each the size of my thumb, hanging from a silver chain.
With a breathless urgency she detached one of the crystals and said, "Your mother needs this charm. It will protect her."
Looking closely at it, I saw that it was a kind of delicate bottle, containing a disembodied flame.
I wanted to ask many things, but the woman's presence had the effect of silencing me. The ground beneath my feet moved, and my head began to ache, my thoughts unclear. Her urgency seeped into me and she kept speaking in soft, fervent tones, but she seemed to have lapsed into an arcane language, and I could not translate it. I peered at her in great earnestness, as if it were the feelings behind her words, and not the words themselves, that were necessary to absorb.
Though the rain continued to fall, I realized I could no
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longer hear it. Nor could I hear the sea, though it had been clearly audible only minutes before. The sky had darkened to a deep blue color, and the entire world seemed to suspend itself in quiet.
The woman was about to go, but she looked at me and hesitated; then she detached another bottle and handed it to me. The flame contained within this one was more robust and brighter red than the other.
I pointed at myself to ask if it was meant for me to keep. She nodded, then stepped away, and I watched her lit figure drift slowly from the ruins. I wanted to follow but could not move from the place where I stood. When I could no longer see her, some spell was broken. I heard the wind again, and the waves.
It stunned me when I realized how dark it was. The rain had stopped. It seemed to me I had spoken to the woman for only a short time, but now evening had come on.
In spite of the desire to reveal everything to Mam, I found myself afraid to. The woman had looked so concerned about Mam. I began concocting a story about how I'd come upon the bottles.
I started home at a quick pace, but stopped in my tracks once to look again at the little bottles. First I looked at the one meant for me. When it caught the light, deep and brilliant colors alternated on its surfaces: emerald into blue, then into violet and a very deep purple. Its beauty filled me with a pleasant sensation and caused my heart to race. I slipped the bottle back into my pocket, then held up the one for Mam in the last of the light,
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studying it. A symbol was engraved in the metal stopper on top: three spirals, all connected to one another. It was at this moment, while my concentration on the symbol was most intent, that Tom Gavan's voice startled me from close behind.
"What have you got?" he said, and grabbed my arm.
I dropped the bottle and it shattered on the stone, all the liquid within absorbed into the earth.
"Look what you've done!" I screamed. If it had been my bottle broken instead of Mam's, my outrage might have been less.
He stared at me with a smile. "You haven't answered my question. What was that?"
"Nothing at all that is any business of yours, you stupid devil!" I cried, barely containing my rage and disappointment. I squatted down, gathering as quickly as I could the shards and the metal stopper, which had remained intact. He grabbed my hand, laughing as he tried to get the pieces from me. I squeezed so tight that the glass cut my palm numerous times.
At that moment, as blood dripped from my hand and I was nearing the verge of hysteria, I felt a tingling warmth from my skirt pocket. Somehow the sensation of the other bottle there calmed me. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. While I possess this bottle, I thought, Tom has
no power to upset me. When I opened my eyes again, I looked with calm indifference at Tom and saw some confused thought pass over his features, the smile dropping from his face. It was my frustrated anger that
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he thrived on. I rose to my feet and continued my steady gaze into his eyes.
"I don't believe you have a soul, Tom Cavan," I said with quiet authority.
Irritated by my calm disdain, he looked lost.
Carefully I placed the wet shards and bottle stopper in my other pocket. Tom remained where he was, unmoving, as I took the strip of cloth I used to tie back my hair and wiped the blood from my hand with it. Some of the luminous liquid from the shards had entered the cuts in my palms, causing a pleasant shiver.
I continued on my way home. Gradually, before a full minute had passed, the cuts were gone.
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***
CHAPTER 3
***
To my great relief, when I got home, Mam did not look upset. She was peeling potatoes, and she gestured with her head to my empty chair next to her, my little peeling knife waiting for me on it. My brothers were sitting near the fire with our father, helping him mend his fishing net.
I smiled at Mam, and she smiled back. I hung up my oilcloth coat at the door and sat down to help her peel.
The kitchen was bright with lamp and firelight. Even when the wind wailed against the outer stones of the cottage, all thatch and mud and whitewash, this room stayed warm. It was the gathering place where everything happened, with its earth floors and open rafters, the walls hung with Mam's dry herbs and Da's fishing tackle, nets and oilskins. The black pot hanging from the
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crane above the hearth issued the fragrant steam of cooking mackerel.
The rest of the cottage beyond this one area was unlit and plunged in shadow: the box bed with the curtain, where my parents slept, and past that, the narrow winding stair that led to the small loft where my brothers slept. And on the other side, closest to the back door that led directly into the cow byre, my own pallet bed on its curtained platform.
I already felt an intense attachment to this little bottle, the one the woman had said was meant for me, in awe of how it had calmed me and given me authority over Tom! I had been thinking that I'd give it to Mam to replace the broken one, but now I tried to think of ways that I would not have to part with it. Perhaps I could find the woman again and tell her what had happened, and she could spare me the last bottle on the necklace for Mam.
"Where were you?" Donal asked. "We were scouting for you but couldn't find you."
"I waited out the rain in the ruins," I said.
"But where were you after that? It stopped raining ages ago," Da said.
I paused. "Just wandering."
"I suppose the wee bird died," Fingal said.
"Yes," I answered.
"Tom's father is in a fury with him, threatening to send him away from Ard Macha," Donal said.
"But his mam doesn't want him to go, and she's fighting to keep him here though he never lifts a finger to help them," Fingal said.
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"He's the last child," Mam said, "and an old cow's calf at that." All of Tom's siblings were much older and had long since scattered to the four winds.
"She's spoiled him, the way she'll never believe a bad thing about him," Da remarked.
"When the Callahan sisters heard that he might leave, they were all in a lather," Donal said.
"Why do those girls fancy him? He's so cruel and awful!"
"Maeve, you're the only girl this side of Killybegs who doesn't melt when she sees Tom Cavan," Donal said. "Ugh!" I made a repulsed face.
"Don't you see it, Maeve?" Mam asked, looking at me with a gentle curiosity. "Even I see it. He's quite the handsome devil."
"I don't see a handsome devil," I said. "Only a devil."
I was too proud to admit that I had my moments of wonder over Tom's physical beauty. He had high cheekbones, a strong jaw and light brown waves of hair that went gold in the summer. I had only studied him at leisure twice. Both times he had not known that he was being observed, and with no one around to taunt, he'd looked lost in thought and vaguely sad, and I had wondered what it was that drove him to be so malicious.
"I hope he goes soon," I said, excited by the prospect of his disappearing from our lives. "Where might he be sent?"
"I don't know. It isn't for certain yet," Fingal said. "Anyway, enough talk about Tom Cavan." He took out the little notebook in which he liked to chart the stars on
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clear nights, matching what he saw to the time of year, the month and the day.
At the schoolhouse in Dunloe, Fingal had heard of Galileo and astronomy and had, to no avail, tried to find books in Dungarven or even in the larger port town of Killybegs. He had these notions about the turning of the world and the stars and sun, a desire to somehow see the order in the universe.
But education was difficult to get; teachers passed through, and for long periods of time, there'd be no teacher in residence at all. Because I was a girl, I didn't even have the option of attending. But Donal, who was also a gifted student, taught me to read from a book of adventure tales, a book that was illustrated with etchings of castles and knights and ladies, which he had borrowed from the schoolhouse and intended to return if there was ever a teacher again.
It had been hard lately to get him to read with me, though. He had become preoccupied with fighting the English invaders in Ireland, and collected stories from friends and acquaintances about English atrocities committed against the Irish.
Fingal got up and wandered to the door, looking out and up at the sky. "It'll rain again tonight," he said with disappointment. Rarely was there a night clear enough that Fingal could observe the movements in the heavens. He sat down near the fire with his notebook and began to reread his scribbled observations from the last clear night.
Mam and I were finishing the potatoes, getting ready
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to boil them with the mackerel, while Da was stoking the embers, bringing the fire to a roar.
I felt Mam's eyes on me and realized that I kept stopping my knife on the skin of the potato, absorbed by the memory of the woman who had given me the bottles.
"Maeve," Mam said, "are you all right?"
I looked up, startled, wishing I could pour my heart out, but some fear held me back.
"Yes, Mam, I'm fine," I replied, though she continued to look at me doubtfully.
Suddenly Donal spoke.
"I heard today about a mother and child that were murdered by English soldiers in Gal-way."
A shadow fell over Mam's face.
"Donal," I said, and shook my head at him.
He looked at me darkly. "It's all got to be spoken about, Maeve. We cannot pretend it isn't happening."
"All right, then, but don't be so detailed in the way you tell things."
He smoothed back a big lock of dark brown hair that kept falling over one eye. "I'll say only this: the English soldiers value Irish lives less than they value the lives of sheep."
The beautiful little bottle in my pocket seemed to pulse just as Mam looked up from her peelings and announced in a soft voice filled with portent, "I have something to tell you children." Tension filled the air as we all waited, hardly breathing. After a silence, she said, "There's going to be a baby."
We all looked at one another anxiously, but Mam
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looked down again at the potato she had in her hands and went quiet.
The rain began to fall, making soft, eerie sounds in the thatch above us.
Mam looked distracted and fragile. When I saw her eyes begin to dampen, I reached with a sudden impulse for the beautiful little bottle in the pocket of my flannel dress and handed it to her.
She put down her knife and took it, holding it up in the firelight.
"How beautiful, Maeve," she whispered, her eyes wide and glistening. "It looks like a little flame in there."
> "I found it at the ruins," I said.
Mam gazed at it incredulously. "Is it fire or is it liquid?" she whispered as if to the air. She seemed to forget about the potatoes, her eyes misting over.
"It's for you!" I said suddenly. I felt a physical pain in my stomach at parting with it.
"Thank you, Maeve," she said quietly, tearing her eyes from it to look at me. She reached over with her other hand and brushed the hair from my face. "You've mud in your hair," she said, slightly startled, and smiled. She looked down at my hems and saw mud dried thick there and on my shoes.
I had not noticed a very tiny hole in the top lip of the bottle, but Mam saw it immediately. She put the bottle on a piece of thread and hung it like a necklace around her neck. I thought it astonishing that she knew to wear it as a charm, and this made me ache to tell her about the woman who had also worn it that way. But as Mam
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picked up her knife again, urging me to do the same, and we peeled the skins from the last of the potatoes, I held back. The woman's concern over Mam caused a heavy weight in my stomach.
When we'd finished, I stoked the fire beneath the pot. Mam suddenly raised her face and listened to something she heard outside. Wiping her hands on a tea towel, she stepped out into the downpour, where she stood without moving.
Da went to her. "Come back inside, Nuala," he said, but she did not reply. After several minutes, each of my brothers chimed in, pleading with her to come inside, but she refused, holding a hand up in the air, still listening hard to something. I went out and stood with her, looking up into her face.
"Do you hear?" she asked me.
At first, I didn't, and I felt my heart growing heavy. But then she took one of my hands in hers, and beyond the drumming and splatter of the rain, I detected another sound. I held my breath and listened to a soft humming, weird and mournful, a voice human-sounding yet hardly human. I recognized it somehow, at moments sweet and plaintive like music, but could not place it. The sound filled me with a vague yearning I could not name. The quiet calling seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The Fire Opal Page 2